High Velocity (1976)

          If you’re willing to overlook a pointless story and sludgy pacing, you might be able to enjoy some of the surface pleasures in High Velocity, an action thriller shot in the Philippines. Leading man Ben Gazzara and costar Paul Winfield strike up decent male-bonding chemistry during their scenes together as mercenaries on a dangerous mission, and Kennan Wynn conjures a passable degree of intensity playing the obnoxious American businessman whom the missionaries strive to rescue from a jungle hideout. Also contributing more than the movie deserves is composer Jerry Goldsmith, whose incredibly prolific output (he scored five other pictures the same year, including Logan’s Run and The Omen) rarely diminished the quality of his work. Among the major players who fail to impress, Britt Ekland adds nothing to a small role as the wife of Wynn’s character, and director Remi Kramer—well, this was his first and last feature film, so that tells you what you need to know about the caliber of the storytelling. Nonetheless, High Velocity contains an adequate number of action scenes, so every so often the movie rises from its stupor to deliver a fleeting thrill.

          Set in some unnamed corner of the Far East, the picture begins by introducing Andersen (Wynn), a blustery executive who treats his local help terribly and isn’t much kinder to his beautiful trophy wife (Ekland). Militia types kidnap Andersen, so the wife hires Vietnam veteran Baumgartner (Gazzara) to plan a rescue operation. He, in turn, solicits the assistance of former comrade-in-arms Watson (Winfield). Various double-crosses ensue, as does a long trek into remote terrain. Sadly, much of the picture comprises dull scenes of the mercenaries staking out the guerilla’s camp. More lively are bits featuring Andersen in captivity, because his kidnappers force the Ugly American to confront the effects of his company’s imperialism. Excepting the friendship between the two mercenaries, nothing in this picture pings emotionally, and the narrative valleys outnumber the peaks. There’s also the little matter of how the plot doesn’t end up making all that much sense once everything is resolved. Yet somehow the combination of skilled actors in three leading roles and a steady stream of zesty cues from Goldsmith keeps High Velocity borderline watchable.

High Velocity: FUNKY

Green Eyes (1977)

          War leaves many victims in its wake, not just the soldiers and civilians directly affected by combat. In the case of the Vietnam War, sexual liaisons between American troops and indigenous women led to the birth of thousands upon thousands of children, many of whom were abandoned by their fathers and thereby consigned to lives of loneliness and poverty. The humanistic made-for-TV drama Green Eyes offers a poignant look at this cycle.

         Paul Winfield, in a touching performance, plays a U.S. Army veteran who returns to Vietnam in order to search for the son he left behind. Upon arrival, however, the soldier discovers that war orphans have become a major national problem, that the survival rate among such children is poor, and that because of economic and political strife lingering in Vietnam, the best chance for some children is adoption by foreigners. Based on a story by Eugene Logan and written with considerable sensitivity by Hollywood veteran David Seltzer, Green Eyes is the cinematic equivalent of encountering a social problem, looking up to the heavens in anguish, and asking, “What can I do?” Yet while bleeding-heart liberalism of the noblest energizes this project, the filmmakers don’t let their editorializing impede the telling of a good story.

          At the beginning of the picture, African-American Lloyd Dubeck (Winfield) returns home with a heavy heart and a limp, having escaped Vietnam with injuries but cognizant that he impregnated the Vietnamese woman with whom he once cohabited. Lloyd has difficulty settling back into civilian life, and his conscience gnaws at him, so he arranges transport back to Southeast Asia, even though the war has not yet ended. Returning to safe zones occupied by American advisors and their colleagues in South Vietnam’s armed forces, Lloyd begins a quest to find his lost lover. Aiding him is Margaret Sheen (Rita Tushingham), an English social worker who operates a bustling orphanage. Lloyd also has a number of encounters with Trung (Lemi), a wide-eyed street urchin who exploits the naïveté of foreigners while using various scams to survive. All of Lloyd’s experiences educate him about the plight of children whose parents are, for all intents and purposes, the war itself.

          Director John Erman does a more than serviceable job of delivering the narrative, utilizing the film’s locations in the Philippines to create a strong sense of verisimilitude. Scenes in slums are particularly evocative. Given the picture’s downbeat storyline, the filmmakers wisely modulate tone by including flashes of humor and playfulness. Better still, moments designed to tug at viewers’ heartstrings have impact without being needlessly maudlin. Driving the whole piece, of course, is Winfield’s warm persona. His pain at witnessing deprivation feels credible, and his joy during the rare moments when his character is able to have a positive impact is contagious.

Green Eyes: GROOVY

A Hero Ain’t Nothin’ but a Sandwich (1978)

          An earnest exploration of problems bedeviling America’s inner cities,  A Hero Ain’t Nothin’ but a Sandwich was adapted from the noted Alice Childress novel of the same name. Put bluntly, the story doesn’t work in terms of cinematic narrative, because Childress, who also wrote the screenplay, failed to define the central focus, thereby falling into the myriad traps of episodic structuring. Is the movie about a young man’s descent into heroin addiction? Is it about that same young man’s fraught relationship with his mother’s boyfriend, a stand-up guy who struggles to break through the protagonist’s youthful arrogance? Or is the story about the difficulties that the protagonist’s mother and teachers face when trying to instill a sense of cultural pride and personal purpose, despite the bleak milieu of life in South Central Los Angeles? The answer to all of these questions is “yes,” and that’s the problem—with rare exceptions, the trick to adapting novels for the screen involves peeling away subplots and themes until only the core story remains, giving filmmakers the tools they need to create onscreen momentum. That didn’t happen here. So, while a great deal of what happens in A Hero Ain’t Nothin’ but a Sandwich is believable and poignant, the parts never cohere into a potent statement.

          The main character is Benjie (Larry B. Scott), a teenager caught between good and bad influences. On the good side, he’s got his stalwart mother, Sweets (Cicely Tyson); her boyfriend, Butler (Paul Winfield); and an Afrocentric schoolteacher, Nigeria (Glynn Turman), who encourages Benjie’s nascent writing ability. On the bad side are various neighborhood lowlifes, including the dealers who draw Benjie into heroin use. While the scenes of Benjie injecting himself are bracing, they feel a bit disconnected from the rest of the story until the second half of the picture, which focuses on Benjie’s attempt to kick his deadly habit. Similarly, it’s unclear that the movie’s most important relationship is the one between Benje and Butler until very close to the end of the movie, when Winfield’s intense work raises the dramatic quality of A Hero Ain’t Nothin’ but a Sandwich to a level suiting the seriousness of the subject matter.

A Hero Ain’t Nothin’ but a Sandwich: FUNKY

Twilight's Last Gleaming (1977)

          While it's easy to see why Twilight's Las Gleaming tanked at the box office during its original release and remains, at best, a minor cult favorite to this day, the movie is a lively addition to the venerable tradition of loopy conspiracy flicks. Featuring an outlandish plot about a crazed U.S. general seizing control of a nuclear-missile launch site in order to force the president to reveal secret documents about America's involvement in Vietnam, the picture is far-fetched in the extreme. It's also ridiculously overlong, sprawling over two and a half hours. Furthermore, gonzo director Robert Aldrich filigrees the story with such unnecessary adornments as split-screen photography, which he uses to simultaneously show the goings-on at the launch site and the reactions of power-brokers in Washington, D.C. Plus, of course, the storyline is downbeat in every imaginable way. For adventurous moviegoers, however, these weaknesses are just as easily interpreted as strengths, particularly when the entertainment value of the acting is taken into consideration.

          Burt Lancaster stars as the general, memorably incarnating a macho idealist who uses duplicity and strategy to manipulate enemies and subordinates alike. Charles Durning, rarely cast as authority figures beyond the level of middle management, makes an unlikely president, his innate likability and the darkness that always simmered beneath his persona offering a complex image of humanistic leadership. Also populating the movie are leather-faced tough guy Richard Widmark, as the officer charged with wresting control of the launch site from the general’s gang; Paul Winfield and Burt Young, as two members of the gang; and reliable veterans Roscoe Lee Browne, Joseph Cotten, Melvyn Douglas, and Richard Jaeckel (to say nothing of Blacula himself, William Marshall). Quite a tony cast for a whackadoodle thriller that borders on science fiction.

          Based on a novel by Walter Wager, Twilight's Last Gleaming represents Aldrich's bleeding-heart storytelling at its most arch—the goal of Lancaster's character is revealing that the U.S. government knew Vietnam was a lost cause but kept fighting, at great cost of blood and treasure, simply to intimidate the Soviet Union. If there's a single ginormous logical flaw in the picture (in fact, there are probably many), it's that Lancaster's character could have achieved his goal through simpler means. But the ballsy contrivance of the picture is that seizing the launch site is a theatrical gesture meant to capture the world's attention. As such, the operatic bloat of Twilight's Last Gleaming reflects the protagonist's modus operandi--like the crusading general, Aldrich swings for the fences. Twilight's Last Gleaming is a strange hybrid of hand-wringing political drama (somewhat in the Rod Serling mode) with guns-a-blazin' action—for better or worse, there's not another movie like this one. Genuine novelty is a rare virtue, and so is the passion with which Aldrich made this offbeat picture.

Twilight's Last Gleaming: GROOVY

Gordon’s War (1973)

          Some blaxploitation movies surmount their limitations through inspired storytelling; others achieve infamy with their grimy excess. And then there are movies like Gordon’s War, which delivers a passable narrative with so-so style—the movie’s not awful, particularly for viewers who are fond of leading actor Paul Winfield, but it’s so generic that, but for the level of cursing and violence, it might as well be an episode of s ’70s action-adventure TV show. The plot is cobbled together from highly familiar elements. Gordon Hudson (Winfield) is a decorated Green Beret who returns from Vietnam to find his Harlem neighborhood overrun with drug dealers, pimps, and other underworld types. When Gordon suffers personal tragedies at the hands of criminals, he recruits several Army buddies to form a vigilante militia and kick hoodlum ass. As directed by the sensitive humanist Ossie Davis, Gordon’s War isn’t quite as tacky as the premise might suggest—Davis tries to imbue scenes with relatable feelings whenever possible, and the characters behave logically. Further, Winfield is such a potent actor that even when he’s speaking trite dialogue, genuine anger seethes beneath his skin.

          But, ultimately, Gordon’s War has a job to do: The movie’s purpose is to stimulate viewers with high-octane inner-city action, meaning lots of bloodshed and chase scenes and gunfire and mayhem. As a result, higher narrative aspirations get short shrift, which has the effect of rendering Gordon’s War quite flat. The picture is neither an all-out actioner nor a legitimate drama. After all, how many “real” movies feature motorcycles crashing through store windows or hoodlums getting burned alive with the ignited discharge from aerosol cans? And in case you’re wondering, Gordon’s War doesn’t add much to the incendiary subgenre of movies about vets-turned-vigilantes, because the title character’s military background is mostly used to explain where he got his experience with guerilla warfare techniques. One wishes Davis and Winfield had been given a chance to dramatize the scars of war, but, clearly, the producers were more interested in explosions, funky soundtrack music, and outrageous pimp outfits.

Gordon’s War: FUNKY

Hustle (1975)

          An admirable but not entirely successful attempt at transplanting classic film-noir themes into a hip ’70s milieu, this downbeat detective thriller features the peculiar pairing of delicate Gallic beauty Catherine Deneuve and suave Deep South stud Burt Reynolds. The fact that these actors don’t exist in the same cinematic universe reflects the many clashing tonalities director Robert Aldrich brings to Hustle. After smoothly blending comedy and drama in an earlier Reynolds movie, The Longest Yard (1974), Aldrich tries to do too many things here, because Hustle aspires to be a tragedy, a whodunit, a commentary on sexual politics, and more. Since Aldrich was generally at his best making unpretentious pulp, with deeper themes buried below the surface, his striving for Big Statements is awkward—much in the same way that Deneuve’s cool sophistication fails to gel with Reynolds’ hot emotionalism, the high and low aspects of this movie’s storytelling collide to produce a narrative muddle.

          The picture begins with cynical LA detectives Phil Gaines (Reynolds) and Louis Belgrave (Paul Winfield) commencing their investigation into the murder of a young hooker. The victim’s father, Korean War vet Marty Hollinger (Ben Johnson), is sniffing around the crime as well, because he wants revenge. When clues identify lawyer Leo Sellers (Eddie Albert) as a possible suspect, things get tricky not only because Sellers has political influence but because Sellers is a patron of another hooker, Nicole (Deneuve)—who happens to be Phil’s girlfriend.

          The idea of a cop living on both sides of the law is always provocative, but in this case, Phil’s relationship with Nicole makes him unsympathetic. Tolerating her demeaning career paints him as a user, while pushing her to abandon her work suggests he’s a chauvinist; there’s no way for Reynolds to win. Nonetheless, the actor gives a valiant effort, while Deneuve struggles to elevate her clichéd role despite obvious difficulty with English-language dialogue. Inhibited by iffy writing and overreaching direction, the stars end up letting their physicality do most of the acting—Deneuve looks ravishing and Reynolds looks tough. But that’s not enough. Excepting Johnson, whose obsessive bloodlust resonates, most of the skilled supporting cast gets lost in the cinematic muddiness, and Aldrich does no one any favors by shooting interiors with ugly, high-contrast lighting. Still, Hustle gets points for seediness and for the nihilism of its ending.

Hustle: FUNKY

Trouble Man (1972)

Whereas most blaxploitation flicks take place in the dingy milieu of dealers, junkies, pimps, and streetwalkers—making exposed flesh, outrageous fashions, and tough slang important elements of their sleazy appeal—Trouble Man belongs to a more restrained crime-picture tradition. Excepting the color of the lead character’s skin, the presence of a soul-music score, and the use of terms like “honky” and “motherfucker,” Trouble Man is basically an old-fashioned potboiler in the Bogart tradition. The lead character, Mr. T. (Robert Hooks), is a take-no-guff private eye who gets framed for murder by ambitious gangsters, so he calls upon his ample resources of a clever mind, a fast gun hand, and plentiful contacts within the police force and the underworld to extricate himself from a sticky situation. Along the way, he clashes with a mixed-race pair of hoodlums (played by an overacting Ralph Waite and a hard-working but underused Paul Winfield), and he enjoys a few moderately interesting arguments with policeman Joe Marx (William Smithers). Mr. T also shares a few pointless scenes with his girlfriend, Cleo (Paula Kelly), and he hangs out in his groovy lair—a back office in a pool hall. Presenting an African-American environment free from blaxploitation’s usual clichés makes Trouble Man mildly refreshing, but the movie’s storyline is disappointing. The deadly first hour comprises lots of convoluted exposition, so, ironically, the sensationalistic extremes found in other blaxploitation flicks are missed. Things pick up a bit in the end, but not quite enough. This is a shame, not only because the picture avoids reducing African-Americans to cartoonish stereotypes, but also because director Ivan Dixon employs solid camerawork and lighting, giving the piece a polished look. Plus, Hooks is a formidable leading man who seems as if he could’ve done something with better material. Yet even the silky score, by Motown legend Marvin Gaye, lacks sufficient energy; only the main theme has a lingering groove.

Trouble Man: FUNKY

The Greatest (1977)

          As a keepsake depicting the heyday of one of modern sports’ most celebrated figures, The Greatest is priceless, because boxer Muhammad Ali plays himself in a brisk overview of his illustrious career’s most notable moments. As a movie, The Greatest is, well, not the greatest. Setting aside the issue of Ali’s amateurish acting, since he never claimed thespian skills among his gifts, the picture is so flat and oversimplified that it’s more of a tribute reel than an actual film. At its worst, The Greatest is outright ridiculous. For instance, the opening-credits montage features Ali jogging while George Benson croons a maudlin version of “The Greatest Love of All,” which was composed for this movie even though most people know the song as a Whitney Houston hit from the ’80s. The problem is that the main lyric, “Learning to love yourself/is the greatest love of all,” doesn’t really apply to the former Cassius Clay, whose bravado is as famous as his pugilistic skill; for this man, self-love was never in short supply.

          Nonetheless, it seems the goal of this picture was to portray Cassius/Muhammad as a simple man trying to find his identity while he clashed with racist white promoters and, during his Vietnam-era battle against being drafted into military service, the U.S. government. Unfortunately, the picture doesn’t dig deep enough to feel believable as an examination of the inner man, especially since most of the events depicted in the picture are familiar to everyone, from Ali’s friendship with Malcolm X (James Earl Jones) to his conversion to Islam. The movie’s credibility is damaged further by the filmmakers’ use of actual footage from Ali’s biggest bouts: The movie frequently cuts from shots of a well-fed 1977 Ali to clips of the same man looking leaner in earlier years, even though the disparate shots are supposed to be contiguous.

          Accentuating the cheesy approach are distracting cameo appearances by Jones, Robert Duvall, David Huddleston, Ben Johnson, and Paul Winfield, all of whom breeze in and out of the movie very quickly. (Ernest Borgnine has a somewhat more substantial role as trainer Angelo Dundee.) FYI, cult-fave director Monte Hellman provided uncredited assistance during post-production after the death of the film’s credited director, reliable journeyman Tom Gries; Hellman performed similar duties two years later on the misbegotten thriller Avalanche Express, joining that production after director Mark Robson died.

The Greatest: LAME

Tom Sawyer (1973) & Huckleberry Finn (1974)

          The sibling songwriting duo of Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman had a huge impact on family entertainment in the ’60s, writing songs for projects including the blockbuster musical Mary Poppins (1964) and Disney’s theme parks (the Shermans wrote “It’s a Small World”). Their dominance of the family-film game ebbed in the ’70s, but not before they expanded their creative purview to include screenwriting. The Shermans wrote the scripts and a brace of original songs for Tom Sawyer, adapted from Mark Twain’s 1876 novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and Huckleberry Finn, adapted from Twain’s revered 1884 sequel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; both films were produced by Arthur P. Jacobs, whose previous entry into the realm of movie musicals was 1967’s super-expensive Doctor Dolittle.

          Given their big-budget pedigree, it’s unsurprising that both Twain adaptations look fantastic, boasting authentic production design and slick photography. However, as Jacobs discovered with the disastrous Dolittle, musicals are all about the songs, and the Twain adaptations are mostly tone-deaf. Plus, although the underlying narratives are timeless, the Shermans make such vapid adaptive choices that the stories end up seeming contrived and stiff.

          Tom Sawyer is the better of the two movies, but only marginally so. Johnny Whitaker (from TV‘s Family Affair) plays Tom in all of the familiar adventures: convincing his friends to paint a fence; witnessing a murder with his buddy, Huck Finn (Jeff East); falling in love with a pretty young neighbor (Jodie Foster); testifying about the murder in court; and enduring a scary underground confrontation with crazed killer Injun Joe (Kunu Hank). Whitaker is cute and enthusiastic, but not skillful enough to create the illusion of Tom’s preternatural cleverness. Therefore, the dramatic heavy lifting falls to screen veterans Celeste Holm (as Tom’s long-suffering Aunt Polly) and Warren Oates (as Tom’s drunkard friend Mutt). As for the songs, the Shermans’ style of cutesy wordplay and syrupy sentimentality clashes with Twain’s thorny sarcasm. The underscore is actually better than the tunes, thanks to the participation of composer John Williams, who earned an Oscar nomination for his work but did not return for the sequel. Ultimately, the most irritating aspect of Tom Sawyer is that it’s decent whenever people aren’t singing, because the plot is full of exciting events and the production values are terrific.

          Ironically, Huckleberry Finn has the key element that eluded Tom Sawyer (a great song), but it’s a lesser film in every other regard. Part of the problem is the odd plotting of Twain’s novel, which has confounded literary critics for generations; though ostensibly the brilliant parable of runaway ragamuffin Huck (East) bonding with runaway slave Jim (Paul Winfield), the story is episodic and burdened with an infuriating third act (which the Shermans omit in favor of something more poetic). As in the first picture, East is competent but not special, and he’s pretty much the whole show, since the formidable Winfield is kept offscreen for a great deal of the movie. Even the presence of lively supporting player Harvey Korman (as a con man who calls himself “The King”) isn’t enough to break the overall tedium. On the plus side is that great song, “Freedom,” which is sung over the opening credits by Roberta Flack. Although “Freedom” eventually gets buried in maudlin strings, the song is a simple reflection of the story’s main theme, and therefore a welcome musical change from the gimmicky trifles that permeate these tiresome films.

Tom Sawyer: FUNKY

Huckleberry Finn: LAME

R.P.M. (1970)

          Though admirable for his commitment to exploring progressive causes onscreen, producer-director Stanley Kramer was also a total square whose movies were so conventional they felt ancient even when they were new. That’s certainly the case with R.P.M. (the poster of which provides the handy translation Revolutions Per Minute), which explores the student unrest that was pervasive on college campus circa the late ’60s. However, instead of building his movie around a student leader whose experiences might illuminate issues related to the counterculture, Kramer focuses on a fiftysomething professor who’s so “hip” to the youth scene that his live-in girlfriend is a 25-year-old grad student (Ann-Margret). Yes, in Kramer’s archaic viewpoint, being a dirty old man is a revolutionary act.

          Further identifying this weird movie as an establishment statement about anti-establishment themes, studio-era leading man Anthony Quinn stars as Professor Paco Perez, a social-sciences specialist recruited by his school’s board of trustees to serve as an interim president after students storm the administration building and force the resignation of the previous president. With his hep-cat clothes and “rebellious” motorcycle, Paco swings to the same lefty tune as student leaders Rossiter (Gary Lockwood) and Dempsey (Paul Winfield), but once Paco starts engaging in rap sessions with the protestors, he discovers the gulf between his grown-up pragmatism and the kids’ all-or-nothing extremism. This renders the whole film somewhat pointless, because the focus on the uninteresting topic of Paco’s midlife crisis pushes the whole subject of student unrest into the background.

          That said, R.P.M. is strangely watchable. Kramer’s filmmaking is energetic, even though he opts for borderline embarrassing vignettes like a dream sequence in which school administrators are seen as clowns. There’s also considerable pleasure to be found in watching Kramer struggle with the movie’s climax, because his shots of the inevitable student riot are laughably overwrought. Furthermore, the dialogue is like a greatest-hits collection of ’60s slang; R.P.M. was penned by future Love Story author Erich Segal, who knew a thing or two about tapping into the zeitgeist. Leading man Quinn is comparatively restrained, embracing the talky role of an intellectual as a switch from his usual casting as animalistic macho men. Lockwood, best known for his costarring role in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) is quietly charismatic; Winfield is characteristically intense; and Ann-Margret’s sex appeal is as formidable as always.

          Ultimately, R.P.M. is fascinating not only for its clumsy onscreen examination of the generation gap, but because its very style demonstrates the breadth of that gap—in every scene, it’s painfully obvious that Kramer and the kids he’s depicting come from totally different worlds. (Available through Columbia Screen Classics Request via WarnerArchive)

R.P.M. : FUNKY

Sounder (1972)

          A graceful Depression-era drama about dignity and struggle, Sounder is grounded in authentic period detail, humanistic themes, meticulous character work, and a strong sense of place. Cicely Tyson and Paul Winfield, who each received their only Oscar nominations for this movie, play the parents of an impoverished sharecropping family in 1933 Tennessee. When Nathan Lee Morgan (Winfield) steals food to keep his family alive, he’s given a harsh one-year prison sentence, forcing Rebecca (Tyson) and the children to pick up the slack with arduous farm work. The story focuses on Nathan Lee’s oldest son, David Lee (Kevin Hooks), who sets out on a long journey with the family dog, Sounder, to visit his father at a prison work camp. During his travels, David Lee meets a kind young teacher, Camille (Janet MacLachlan), who offers to take the boy into her home so he can study at a better school. Notwithstanding the intense scene of Nathan Lee’s arrest, during which Sounder is shot at by a trigger-happy deputy, director Martin Ritt and his team eschew narrative pyrotechnics in their sensitive adaptation of William H. Armstrong’s novel. Instead, they opt for a steady rhythm of one quietly convincing scene after another, letting emotions take center stage, somewhat in the style of To Kill a Mockingbird (1962).
          Hooks is a comfortable presence who neither detracts from nor elevates the movie, but Tyson and Winfield are moving. Winfield in particular evokes such intense feelings of anguish, emasculation, frustration, and pride that he’s a dominant presence even during the long sequences in which he’s unseen. Tyson, meanwhile, personifies endurance and strength, demonstrating how Rebecca finds the stamina to keep her family together. Bluesman Taj Mahal, who also provided the film’s score, appears in several scenes as a friendly neighbor always ready to entertain with his battered National guitar. If Sounder has a shortcoming, it’s that the movie is somewhat Pollyannish with its theme of the decent people in the world outnumbering the haters. For a story set in the Jim Crow South, that’s a heartening thought but not exactly a credible one.
         Following a respectable sequel made by a different team (1976’s Sounder, Part 2), Sounder was remade for television in 2003, with Hooks graduating from juvenile leading player to grown-up director; Winfield co-starred, delivering one of his last performances before he died in 2004.

Sounder: RIGHT ON

Damnation Alley (1977)

According to Hollywood lore, the fine folks at Twentieth Century-Fox originally thought Damnation Alley, based on a novel by journeyman genre writer Roger Zelzany, was going to be their big sci-fi hit for 1977, so they pumped more marketing money into this old-school cheapie than they did into that strange little movie George Lucas was shooting in England about some character called Luke Skywalker. Suffice it to say there was a course correction when Star Wars opened on May 25, so by the time Damnation hit theaters on October 21, it had already been rendered obsolete in almost every conceivable way by Lucas’ space opera. Looking at Damnation in the context of Hollywood history is about the only way to generate interest in the thing, which would have been passable as a pilot for one of those cheesy sci-fi shows that thrived on Saturday-morning TV in the ’70s, but doesn’t remotely make the grade as a theatrical feature. The plot is the usual post-apocalyptic hooey, with a gaggle of survivors traversing irradiated terrain in a pimped-out Winnebago while avoiding things like overabundant and/or oversized bugs. The effects are clunky in a sorta-endearing fashion (the scorching red skies are pretty cool), but the action and characterizations are utilitarian at best. The only real appeal, aside from the kitsch factor germane to all crappy ’70s sci-fi, is in watching the colorful B-grade cast: George Peppard, showing a glimmer of A-Team things to come, leads an RV filled with Jackie Earle Haley, Jan-Michael Vincent, Dominique Sanda, and Paul Winfield. All fun personalities, all badly underused here. Still, it’s impossible to hate a movie that features Peppard barking lines like this one into his CB: “Tanner, this is Denton. This whole town is infested with killer cockroaches. Repeat, killer cockroaches!”

Damnation Alley: LAME